A system supports a driving operation of a driver by installing cameras as imaging devices on vehicles and displaying images, which are captured by the cameras, on a display device. In many systems, wide angle cameras are used and are capable of imaging wide ranges at one time.
When a system supports driving by displaying a captured image of a rear view from a vehicle, for example, it may be difficult to intuitively recognize a relationship between vehicle motion and a change in the display image when a wide angle camera is arranged at a position that is deviated from a center line of the vehicle in a longitudinal direction. Thus, a system that extracts a partial image, the center of which coincides with the center line of the vehicle in the longitudinal direction, from the image of the rear view from the vehicle, which is captured by the wide angle camera arranged at the position that is deviated from the center line of the vehicle in the longitudinal direction and displays the partial image has been proposed (referring to Patent literature 1).
The inventors of the present application have found the following regarding an image processing apparatus and an image processing method.
In an image captured by a wide angle camera, distortion of an object increases and a degree of size reduction of the object increases (that is, the object appears to have a smaller size) as going farther from the center of the image. When a part of the captured image is extracted and displayed as a display image, it may become more difficult for an occupant (a driver, for example) in a vehicle to recognize the display image when a part being farther from the center of the captured image is extracted. Since an object being farther from the center of the captured image is displayed in a smaller size when the extracted image is displayed without performing distortion correction, it may be difficult for the occupant in the vehicle to recognize the object. Even when the extracted image is displayed after distortion correction, an object being farther from the center of the captured image is enlarged by a larger enlargement factor in the distortion correction. An image with lower resolution may be obtained. Therefore, it may be difficult for the occupant in the vehicle to recognize the object. A region around the center line of the vehicle in the longitudinal direction may be farther distant from the center of the captured image and the above difficulty may become more serious when an installation position of the camera is more greatly deviated from the center line of the vehicle in the longitudinal direction.